AS PROMISED - SAMPLE CHAPTER FROM SCOTTISH MILITARY DISASTERS - > Book Extract
* He was an Eighteenth Century Scottish Forrest Gump - Stobo
** Here's one that combines Canadian and Scottish themes - Tunnelling for Victory
*** Those who enjoyed reading about the Royal Scots’ Armistice Day battle with the Bolsheviks in 1918might be interested in the same fight as seen from a Canadian viewpoint - Canada’s Winter War
***** Read about the blunder that made Canada an easy target for invasion from the United States - Undefended Border
****** Read about the Second World War's Lord McHaw Haw
******* Serious questionmarks over the official version of one the British Army's most dearly held legends - The Real Mackay?
********** It's been a while since I posted a new article. This one's called Temptation
********** Read about how the most Highland of the Highland regiments during the Second World War fared in the Canadian Rockies - Drug Store Commandos.
************* We now have a Guide to Scottish military museums on this site.
************** Just weeks before the outbreak of the First World War one of Britain's most bitter enemies walked free from a Canadian jail - Dynamite Dillon
*************** Click to read - - Victoria's Royal Canadians - about one of the more unusual of the British regiments.
*************** Read an article about the Royal Scots and their desperate fight against the Bolsheviks on Armistice Day 1918 - Forgotten War A second article, looks at the same battle but through a Canadian lens .
***************No-one has got back to me with a German source for the claim that the kilties during the First World War were known as The Ladies from Hell . See My Challenge to You
***************** A map showing the old Scottish regimental recruiting districts can now be seen by clicking Recruiting Area Map .
****************** The Fighting Men 1746 article now includes the estimated strengths of the Jacobite clan regiments which marched into England in 1745 See Clan Strengths
****************** **I've posted a fresh article - Scotland’s Forgotten Regiments. Guess what it's about.
******************** The High Court Hearing in London in May 2012 attracted a lot of visitors to this site. See Batang Kali Revisited
********************* Why not have a look at Book of the Year
Killer Exiles
There have been a lot of exiles on my radio recently -Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Lebanon. The thing is that many of them don't represent opinion or feeling in their home countries. They are not drawn from the massive columns of refugees crowded at border fleeing war or an oppressive regime with all their possessions balanced on their heads. They are mainly from the most privileged sections of society and in some cases have had to leave their country because they were involved in trying to reinstall a nasty right-wing regime. A number of Iranian exiles were on the radio lamenting the supposed ceasefire in Iran. They wanted the airstrikes to continue until the Islamic regime is ousted. Easy for them to demand. Back in Iran there were certainly people who initially welcomed the attacks. Then they realised that the American plan is to free them by trying to kill them. Now they are not so keen. I wish the radio would stop giving these privileged, usually politically extremist, exiles so much of a platform.
Flawed Production
I just heard a crime drama in which Tyneside had apparently become part of Yorkshire. Not a single Geordie accent. I know not everyone in the area has a discernible Geordie accent, but no-one at all of them. Maybe that was one of the reason the London-based producer of The Black Museum, Harry Towers, failed in the early 1950s to interest the BBC in broadcasting the programme. Another reason might be the scriptwriters' bizarre habit of putting American words into the mouths of British characters. No-one in London would have spoken about sidewalks, wrenches or streetcars. I was also baffled as to why Scotland Yard would be involved in investigating an 1857 murder in Glasgow. But I do know that trial would not have involved only 12 jurors. So, a lack of research may also have put the BBC off buying the drama. Even the involvement of Orson Welles in the project counted for nothing so far as the BBC was concerned. My wee brother tells me the programme, set in the UK and first broadcast in America, was recorded in Australia using local actors.
Shameless Plug #9 - With Wellington was among the books recommended as an excellent Christmas present by the prestigious The Society for Army Historical Research. There was another mysterious surge in sales of With Wellington last summer. At the end of May it was the third best selling book about the Peninsular War on the website of one of Britain's biggest booksellers and Number Eighteen in the table for all Napoleonic books. Last December's sales surge turned out to be a combination of the venerable Scots Magazine declaring it Book of the Month in its January 2015 edition and a highly favourable review in the Napoleonic Association's newsletter. Scots Magazine's reviewer, nature writer and author, Jim Crumley, declared "I don't much care for military memoirs, but I could not put this one down". Other reviewers have been equally enthusiastic - "If you are interested in the memoirs of British soldiers in the Napoleonic Wars this book is a MUST!... You don't get many Napoleonic memoirs as good as this" and "It is the most candid memoir of the British Army I have ever read... does not pull any punches ... highly entertaining, but also thought provoking..." To have a look at the full reviews check out more about With Wellington
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